our eyes once watered
by mcfuz
Summary: You feel it when the anthrax reaches your lungs. A quick, sharp inhale, and you feel it hit your nasopharynx, your oropharynx, your larynx, your trachea. It spirals down your windpipe, a white powder fine as dust, and settles in your lungs. You feel it. You feel it, and by the time Morgan finds you, you know it's already too late. / An Amplification!AU minus the happy ending.


_We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except the memory of the smell of smoke and a presumption that once our eyes watered. _Tom Stoppard.

* * *

You feel it when the anthrax reaches your lungs. A quick, sharp inhale, and you feel it hit your nasopharynx, your oropharynx, your larynx, your trachea. It spirals down your windpipe, a white powder fine as dust, and settles in your lungs.

You feel it.

You feel it, and by the time Morgan finds you, you know it's already too late.

* * *

When Spencer is small—old enough to read Tolstoy on his own, but too young to get through Chaucer without help—his mom takes him to his uncle Danny's funeral. They watch as the coffin is lowered into the ground, stand silently as the priest gives a final speech, and stay standing as the crowd of mourners slowly filters away.

"What happens after you die?" Spencer asks his mom, eyes squinting in the sunlight behind his thick-templed glasses. Diana kneels down beside her son and gives a small shrug.

"Well," she begins, staring at the mound of freshly turned earth where her brother's body will remain forever, "Some people believe you go to a better place. A kind of paradise, I suppose. And other people think that when you die, you're just born again in another body." She reaches forward and taps her son lightly on the nose. "You could be a seventy-year-old woman, for all I know." Spencer giggles and Diana smiles, rising from her crouch.

"But what do you believe?" he asks as they walk back towards their car, and Diana tries hard to suppress a laugh. Forever asking questions, this son of hers. If he isn't careful, one day it'll lead him straight into trouble.

"Well," she says, dragging out the word as she fishes for the car keys in her jacket pocket, "I believe that if we think too much about the future, we forget what's happening right now. And right now is the most important time of your life." Spencer nods, looking far too wise and philosophical for a four-year-old boy. She's proud of him for that fact, but it also makes her afraid. Sometimes she wishes he was like other kids his age—shy, innocent, naive about the world and the people in it. At least then she'd feel like she's taking care of him, like a good mother should. Him being like this—it makes her wonder whether he even needs her at all, and if he ever will.

"Don't you worry about it," she finally says, opening his car door for him and walking around to the driver's side. "Nothing bad's gonna happen to you for a long, long time."

* * *

By the time Hotch gets there, the fear has already set in. You try not to show it, but you think he notices anyway. Notices the desperate, panicked edge to your voice, the flushed and sweaty skin, the tremor to your hands as you hold them up to the glass. You've really screwed up this time, and you're afraid you won't have the chance to make it right.

You know you won't have the chance to make it right.

You just wonder how much time you have left to try.

* * *

Elle's phone goes off at three in the morning, Portland time. She stabs the accept button angrily, and barks into the phone, "Greenaway," because whoever's calling her at this hour better have a damn good reason.

"Elle," the caller says, and her blood runs hot.

"How'd you find me?"

"We never lost you. I had Garcia pull your number from your file."

"Great." She thumps heavily back onto her pillows. The thought that the Bureau's been watching her this whole time is extremely disconcerting. "What do you want, Hotch?"

There's silence on the other end. A heavy breath. A pause. Elle sits up again and twists the fabric of her sheets between her fingers. "Hotch?" she asks again, almost a whisper, suddenly afraid of why he's contacted her after all these years. "What happened?"

There's another deep breath and then a long sigh through the phone. Elle's limbs feel like lead. "It's Reid," he finally says, and Elle forgets how to breathe.

* * *

You ask Garcia to record a message to your mom, because even though you tell her it's "_just in case__,_" you know otherwise.

You know you'll never see your mom again.

You know you'll never find out if her schizophrenia was genetic; if it's in your genes too. You know you'll never write her another letter, never hear her voice reading you bedtime stories again. The only comfort is that you know you'll never have to see her die, but this is a catch-22. You'll never have to see that happen to her, but she'll see it happen to you.

* * *

Will's trying to get Henry to sleep for the third time in as many hours when the front door opens and he hears JJ walk inside. Unfortunately, Henry hears as well, and is immediately wide awake again. Will swallows down his annoyance and makes his way out of the nursery.

He finds JJ in the kitchen, her arms braced against the counter. "You said you'd be home hours ago," he tells her, rubbing Henry's back. "You weren't answering my calls."

JJ's shoulders shudder, and Will is ashamed at the seconds that pass before he realises she's crying. When he does, he rushes forward, holding Henry in his left arm and using his right to turn JJ to face him. Her face is pale, splotched with tears, her eyes sunken and red. She doesn't say a word, just throws her arms around Will's neck, mindful of Henry but otherwise uncaring.

Will doesn't ask what's wrong. He doesn't need to.

He just wonders who she's crying for.

* * *

Kimura offers you something for the pain she knows you're feeling, and there's a moment, just a moment, when you consider taking it.

With Hankel, the Dilaudid had been a blessing. You'd drifted in and out of consciousness, pleasantly numb, your head cloudy and your limbs weightless. You'd taken those bottles from his still-warm corpse because you wanted to feel that way again. But at home, with a syringe in one hand and the drugs in the other, you couldn't do it.

You like to think it was because of your strength of character, but you know that's a lie. You didn't shoot up because you were afraid, and you were ashamed. Afraid that if you started, you wouldn't be able to stop. Afraid what would happen if the team found out. Afraid of what they'd think. Ashamed of what they'd think, because it would have been true.

Regardless, you'd held onto those bottles for months. You'd take them from your pocket and just look at them. Sometimes you'd pop open the cap. Your hands would be shaking.

The day Gideon left, you filled up a syringe and rested it against the crook of your elbow. The needle had been cold against your skin. You'd sat in your bathroom for hours, calm, thinking about what would happen if you just gave a little push. You didn't end up doing it, of course. JJ had called about a case, and the decision was made for you.

This time, the decision is all yours, and for a split second, you consider it.

You think about feeling that way again. Feeling that numbness, that peace. Letting the tightness of your lungs and the rawness of your throat just disappear.

But you remember that when people die, the coroner tests their bloodstream for drugs. Maybe you were a junkie once, and maybe if things had gone differently you would have been again, but you don't want to be one when you die.

"I'd rather not take any pain medication," you tell Kimura, and refuse flat out when she offers again.

You think Gideon would be proud.

* * *

Hotch scrolls through the contacts on Reid's phone and calls them, one by one. He gives them the same message, the same details, the same condolences. There aren't that many to get through, really. Just a few friends, a sponsor from Narcotics Anonymous, and Bennington.

When he reaches "L", he pauses. His thumb hovers over the name _Lila Archer_. According to Reid's call log, that number hasn't been dialled in more than a year.

He calls anyway.

It rings through to voicemail. Hotch shouldn't be surprised. It's early morning, would be even earlier in LA, and there's probably at least an agent, a publicist and a stylist to get through before he'd reach her.

He leaves a message, a slightly altered version of the one he's been repeating for the last half hour or so. He asks her to call back when she gets it, because there are some things he won't say to an answering machine.

He waits all day. There's no response.

At least he can say he tried.

* * *

You try to help with the case as much as you can, but even without the drugs, your head's started to get fuzzy. Kimura is still searching for a cure based on what you told her about Nichols, but even if she does find it, you aren't holding out much hope that it'll work. Judging by how your internal organs feel at the moment, you'd say the anthrax has already spread too far to be countered, just like it has spread through and ravaged the bodies of Abby and every other patient in the ER.

Kimura lets out a triumphant cry, then, and rushes to you with an inhaler. You snatch it from her and depress it into your mouth, your heart thumping violently in your ribcage because even though you know, statistically, that your chances of survival are a thousand to one, you can't help but hope that you are the outlier. The exception.

You've always been told you were special, and right now, you try to believe it more than ever.

* * *

The first thing Morgan does when he gets home is feed Clooney, almost on autopilot. The second thing he does is walk into the bathroom, strip off his clothes and get in the shower under a scalding spray of water. He scrubs and scrubs and scrubs at his skin, scrubs until it is raw and bleeding, scrubs until he feels new again.

After drying off and getting dressed, the third thing he does is lie down on his bed and curl up into a ball.

He hasn't felt this way since his father died. Since Buford. Since he was a wreck from all the lies and the pain and the promises to stay quiet.

He remembers Reid telling him once that there were three different kinds of memory. Sensory, short-term and long-term.

Morgan remembers the cool slap of the glass against his palms as Reid shut the door on him. He remembers the taste of bile rising in his throat as he connected the dots between the spilled white power and the blasting aircon. He remembers curling his hands into fists and the sharpness of his own fingernails as they cut into the meat of his palm.

He remembers the waiting room at the hospital. The rush of sound all around him. The looks on the faces of Emily, of Hotch, of Rossi and JJ and Garcia.

He remembers riding with Reid to the crime scene, laughing over some joke. He remembers ribbing the younger agent the day before over his hair. He remembers telling Reid that when it comes to the torment and the people who've inflicted it, we've all got an elephant's memory.

Morgan wonders if he'll ever forget what happened today, but he doubts it. He wonders if it'll be burned forever into the recesses of his brain, and he knows he doesn't need an eidetic memory or an IQ of 187 to know that the answer is yes.

* * *

It's when someone asks you in a panicked voice if you cut yourself that you know it's over. Anthrax in the lungs is one thing, but in an open wound?

You're not going to make it through the night.

* * *

The service takes place in a small Las Vegas cemetery on the outskirts of the city. Gideon slips in at the back quietly, inconspicuously, eyes drawn to the mourners at the front of the crowd and then to the left, to the oak casket lying in a wreath of flowers.

He doesn't feel ill, only empty, having lost his breakfast to the toilet earlier that morning. Something deep inside of him wants to scream, wants to shout that this is all wrong, all, all wrong, they made a mistake, it's just a joke, _something_. Something to discredit that coffin lying so sedately among a forest of mossy tombstones.

Someone stops beside him and sighs. Gideon doesn't have to turn his head to know it's Elle.

"How come you're not up there?" she asks, hands shoved deep into the pockets of her jacket, not meeting his eyes.

"I left," he tells her, the words getting stuck in his throat. "A long time ago. It wasn't a happy goodbye."

Elle snorts softly. "Join the club." They stand in silence for a while, listening to the celebrant give his official speech. When he's finished, JJ steps out in front of the crowd and begins her own. Elle gives another sigh and looks away. "I like to think he'd be glad to have us here," she says quietly, "But I don't know if that's true."

Gideon doesn't say anything, just nods, his gaze fixed on JJ's face and following the path of her tears as they track small tributaries down her cheeks, and fall from her chin to water the grass she's standing on.

* * *

You knew about the aphasia theoretically, of course, but experiencing it is a whole different thing. You've been held captive by a deranged schizophrenic, gone undercover with a suicidal cult leader, talked down teenagers holding guns to your head, but you've never felt so trapped, so scared, so utterly incapable in all your life, as you do in the moment when the neural pathways in your parietal lobe fail you.

It makes you panic.

It makes it hard to breathe.

"He's gone into respiratory distress!" you hear someone yell, but it's as if you're hearing it from a great distance. The jolting and the rocking and the rumbling of the ambulance fades away, until there is only bright light, and then that light fades away too, and all that's left is the dark.

* * *

They always wind up at the same bar after a particularly gruelling case. It's kind of a dive, but it suits the mood they're always in. Elle buys the drinks this time, and Morgan says the next round's on him. Reid buys the round after that, JJ the one after that, and Garcia ends up supplying them with a tray full of tequila slammers.

They all wind up blindingly drunk. Reid doesn't know whose idea it is, but someone suggests playing Truth or Dare at some point during the night, and none of them are really in a position to disagree.

It starts off silly, questions like _are you a virgin?_ and _who was your first crush on the BAU team?_ The dares are more interesting, from Elle kissing a bartender full on the mouth to Morgan getting up on the table and singing the entirety of REO Speedwagon's _Can't Fight This Feeling_. When it gets around to Reid's turn to ask a question, he doesn't even think to check his brain-to-mouth filter before he asks JJ which member of the team she thinks will die in the line of duty first.

The question does nothing to dampen the mood. JJ teeters on her seat as she considers it, and the others look like they're dying to give their input. "Well I hardly think Garcia's at risk," she hiccups, "And no'ffence, Reid, but you're not really high on my list either." Reid waves a drunken hand in acceptance. "Morgan does like kicking down those doors, though, so I'll hav'to say him."

"Damn right I like kicking down those doors," Morgan says, banging his glass on the table and sloshing the alcohol over the side. "But I reckon Hotch might gimme a run for my money."

"And I wouldn't?" Elle slurs, looking as offended as one can get when sloshed. "I kick down doors too, sometimes."

"You're right." Morgan nods towards her. "You, me 'n Hotch 'n Gideon I reckon. One of us. Whadd'ya think, pretty boy?"

Reid could try and remember exact statistics, but he thinks they'd probably lead him to the same conclusion. "Sounds good to me," he says. "Just hope s'not for while yet."

"I'll drink to that," Elle laughs, and they do.

* * *

_Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave._ Joseph Hall.


End file.
